


The Inventor and the Musician

by esk95



Category: Doctor Who, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 魔道祖师 | Módào Zǔshī (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Lan Zhan is the Musician, M/M, Mutual Pining, No Doctor here sorry, No beta we die like Time Lords during the Fall of Arcadia, The MDZS x Doctor Who crossover I've been dying to write, The junior trio are the Inventor's human companions, They both think they are the last of their kind, Wangxian are Time Lords, Wei Ying is the Inventor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23302048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esk95/pseuds/esk95
Summary: When the Inventor seeshim, he can't believe he's real. He... can't be here. He simply can't.He's... dead. They all are.All the Time Lords.And yet... the Musician is here. Aloof as ever, still dressed in white, wearing that same face he had three centuries ago when he last saw him... Has he really not regenerated, after all this time?Well, the Musician has always been a lot more careful than he is.His first reaction is to hide, to run away - he's a fugitive after all, and the other Time Lord has never liked him much - then the Inventor remembers thathe, on the other hand, has regenerated since the last time they saw each other. The Musician shouldn't recognize him...
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Comments: 31
Kudos: 93





	1. Zombies, you said?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!  
> So, this whole idea sparked from a little remark in another fic I'm writing, and then some people were actually into this idea of a MDZS x Doctor Who crossover, and the plot bunny wouldn't leave me so I had to write it.  
> I've planned 7 short chapters like this one (for now - it may end up being longer)... Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inventor gets excited about a Mystery, and the Musician is so angsty he should be called the Emo Lord.

“…Anyway, so _that_ ’s how my grandfather ended up with a zombie invasion at his company's headquarters.”

Jin Ling finishes his story, but the Inventor only tunes in for the last sentence. He tries to sit up, but he bangs his head on his TARDIS’ console in the process, and lets out a sonorous “Ouch!” which has Jin Ling worried over the phone.

“What is going on? You’re not fighting anyone without us, are you? Or any _thing_?” It’s always funny (and endearing, really) how his three human companions get jealous of his time whenever he’s not on an adventure with them.

What do they think he should do while they’re busy doing… whatever humans do – stay locked up in the TARDIS and not go anywhere and _play squash_ or something? Or go on some kind of tourist-y planet for some R & R?

He’s tried it once: he stayed put for half a day ( _half a day!!_ ) before he decided he was bored out of his mind and he had to _do something_. He ended up fixing the hotel’s pool, the planet’s sun, and having to run because _apparently_ he had desacralized their most precious relic when he used it as a hammer in the process. All in one afternoon. (Maybe he should invent some kind of device for that, just in case. Something sonic, maybe? A sonic hammer? He needs to get back to that idea, one day.)

So, yeah… He doesn’t do _rest_ , really.

This time, he had planned to go check out this planet with a funny name he can never remember, what is it again? Rexico… Raxicoruco… Rexicoricofal– Whatever. He _would_ have brought his companions with him, but Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi said something about _‘end-of-term exams’_ and _‘failing college if they missed too many classes’_. And then Jin Ling said something about _‘a family reunion that he couldn’t miss, even though he can’t stand his grandfather’_ – and it sounded like even _Jin Ling_ was bored in advance… So what was a poor Time Lord supposed to do, come along? Of course not.

He just flew them back to Earth, fished out the psychic paper card that was _supposed_ to be somewhere in his jacket but had _somehow_ made its way into Lan Jingyi’s pocket – the young man had the gall to try and look surprised that it was even there – and waved them goodbye before he flew off. Then he spent some time visiting a lovely swamp, on a moon that was somehow conscious _and_ telepathic. (By the time he left, it looked like said moon had taken a fancy to him. He tried to convince her that it couldn’t have worked between them, since she was way too attached to her planet – then again, moons tended to do that.)

At this point, he had meant to check out the planet with an impossible name, or maybe design his new sonic device, or anything else that would cross his mind the next moment, when his TARDIS started making strange wheezing noises and he had to plunge under the console to see what was wrong.

Which brings him to this very moment: sitting in the main control room, rubbing his head, his shirt full of dark grease stains (there’s a reason he always wears black), and a big smile on his face, repeating after Jin Ling: “Zombies, you said?”

The smartass answers: “Technically, I said ‘a zombie invasion’, that’s _‘zombie’_ , singular…”

“If it’s an invasion, it’s probably _‘zombies’_ , plural.” While he banters with the youth, he mechanically pulls a few levers and pushes a few buttons on the console, and his TARDIS lands on Earth, making a bit more noise than usual. The repairs he has made are enough for now, and his good old ship just needs some time on its own to finish repairing itself.

He ignores Jin Ling when the youth asks him what he is doing, and he just questions him with barely contained excitement: “Where is your grandfather’s company, exactly? And what happened, again? Tell me _everything you know_!”

***

The Musician is true to his chosen name today.

He is sitting on a stool, in the library of his TARDIS, a huge room with high bookshelves made of carved wood, going as far as the eye can see. Instead of reading, he has picked up one of his favorite instruments in the music room – a violin – and walked to the library, just so he could be surrounded by books. He feels less lonely around books. They are voices from the past, whispering to each other in their shelves. They are like him, in a way. Ancient, filled with the memories of things lost and forgotten… Cold. He wonders if they hurt, too. He hopes not.

He stops playing when he recognizes the melody he has just drawn from his violin. He could swear he was just improvising, playing random things… But it seems like old habits die hard. He has tried to stop playing this song – it’s been three centuries, isn’t he allowed to forget? But it seems that forgetting is even more painful than remembering.

Besides, what does he have left, except memories? People can forget when they have something, someone – a reason to move on. What does he have left? A TARDIS. The whole of time and space… Nothing.

The whole universe feels empty when his planet is gone. When his entire race is gone. (When _he_ … is gone.)

Once again, he thinks that he should just give up. He should stop clinging to the foolish, stupid hope that crushes both of his hearts a bit more every day, when he asks his TARDIS to scan the universe for signals, soundwaves, anything that could have a link to gallifreyan technology… And the screen shows nothing.

Even worse are the days when the screen _does_ show something, and he can’t help but to think that maybe, just maybe he is not the only one… Maybe there is another Time Lord out there who made it out of the Time War… (Maybe it is _him_ …)

And carried by that foolish hope, he travels to the source of the signal, and finds… Nothing. A relic of the past. Bits and pieces of a TARDIS on an old battlefield, damaged beyond repair. ( _He_ could have repaired it, he was so good at fixing broken things…) A skeleton with some kind of sonic device tucked in his pockets, still emitting its signal like a last prayer for a proper burial. He wants to bury his hopes with the skeleton, but he just can’t, no matter how hard he tries.

He sighs, shakes off the sinister thoughts and stands to put his violin away in the music room, when he hears the signal: his TARDIS has found something. For a second, he just stands here, petrified. It’s been decades since the last time his ship picked up a signal… He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to check it out, again, and be disappointed, again. How long can he stand it, he wonders? How long until his hearts finally break and he ends up flying his TARDIS into a collapsing star?

He clutches the hand that’s not holding the violin, once, twice… Then he puts the instrument on his stool and hurries to the control room.

Just this once, he thinks. (…It is a lie. He will do it, again and again, until he can’t anymore.) Just this once, he will see where the signal leads him.

The screen displays a time, and a location. The date is in the 21st century… The location, somewhere on a planet called Earth. That’s the world where the humans originated, if he remembers correctly – and he usually does. He sighs: he doesn’t really like being around humans, they are both too similar to his people and too different at the same time… At least, he won’t stand out too much.

With another sigh, he pulls down one of the levers on his console. He’s off to Earth, apparently. Who knows? Maybe he will find something, this time. (He doesn’t dare to hope for _someone_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you didn't get whiplash from the change of tone between WY and LZ's POV! But I had to bring a bit of angst into things, just so it can get better afterwards...
> 
> Please leave kudos and comments if you liked the first chapter, I'll try to reply to everyone!


	2. Is that a thing humans do?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's infiltration time! For their ships first, then for themselves. It's... not easy to be stealthy for everyone.

The Inventor grabs his jacket, his tools and checks that everything is in (relative) order in the control room before he leaves.

He doesn’t want to reiterate that embarrassing time when he forgot to put the brakes on and left his TARDIS unattended, thinking it would be _a good idea_ to ask the matrix to calculate the precise date and location for his next trip while he was busy somewhere else. Needless to say that he wasn’t too happy to find an empty spot where he had left his ship. It was such a hustle to bring it back too. (The task involved a few curtain rods, some antimatter and a bit of help from Isaac Newton. The lad was surprisingly fun, when he wasn’t around apples.)

Once he is sure he won’t find his ship at the other end of the universe, he opens the door – and curses. He extracts himself through the opening – way too small and impractical – then steps back to look at his ship. She did it again. In front of him is a car – and not a random car either: it’s a shining, grey Aston Martin straight out of an old school James Bond movie.

He face-palms, thinking a good talk with his TARDIS’s chameleon circuit is long overdue. Every time they stop on a planet that has some kind of transportation or vehicle, his ship just _has_ to morph into the most expensive, vintage version of said vehicle – it’s embarrassing, really. He leans over to whisper to his ship (he isn’t about to yell at a car and look like a crazy person _again_ , okay): “Will you stop showing off? You’re supposed to _blend in_ , not stand out! What’s the point of your perception filter if you’re going to do _that_ , uh?” Maybe it’s his imagination, but the car looks a bit sheepish for a second. As it should.

At least the spot his ship has landed in isn’t conspicuous – an accomplishment rare enough to be mentioned. He is actually standing in the middle of a parking lot, near the address Jin Ling had given him. He is surrounded by tall office buildings, and the sidewalks are full of people in suits who all seem to think that the task they’re currently busy with is the Most Important Thing Ever (that’s _a lot_ of Most Important Things Ever, he muses…). There’s a food truck near the parking lot, but it’s not open for business yet. (It sells noodles. He _really_ could go for noodles when he’s finished with the zombies…)

As he walks towards the address Jin Ling provided, the Inventor goes over everything his companion told him. Jin Ling’s grandfather is the CEO of a pharmaceutical company. It’s all very secret, but Jin Ling has _‘totally accidentally’_ overheard a phone conversation that suggests something has gone very wrong during the clinical tests for a new drug. It was supposed to be a revolutionary drug, showing promising results on cancer patients. The tests were going well, until some of the volunteers started having seizures, and were declared brain dead a few hours later.

Except… They didn’t stay dead.

Minutes after their death, they started walking and attacking the personnel. They didn’t seem conscious, they didn’t talk or react to what they were told – _‘just like zombies’_ , had said Jin Ling with something like horrified excitement in his voice. Another strange detail was that apparently, although they couldn’t talk, they screamed. All the time. At the top of their voices.

It’s all very weird indeed. The Inventor has no clue of what could have caused this, but it’s all the more exciting to go in blind. He’s going to have to be a bit subtle: the whole affair isn’t public right now, Jin Ling’s grandfather is apparently trying really hard to keep it secret and hasn’t even called the police yet. So… It’s infiltration time! The Inventor is going to have to pose as a human. Good thing he has a whole persona that he has perfected through the years, ready to use for that very purpose.

He approaches one of the tallest buildings in the street. There are a few men and women in suits or lab coats taking their smoke break in front of it, but he doesn’t pay them any mind. He enters the building and stands in front of the reception desk to flash his psychic paper card at the lady sitting there. The card is blank of course, but her mind will fill it with whatever seems coherent to her. He smiles his widest grin and greets: “Hello! My name is Wei Ying! I’m the repair man!”

***

The Musician carefully checks his monitors before he leaves his ship. His TARDIS has picked up a strong signal earlier, but now the readings are… confusing. There are a few signals that look like Gallifreyan technology, but they are masked by other signals that his ship cannot recognize. It is unusual. Strange. Especially for this planet, at this point of time.

The thing is, most of his people’s technology works telepathically. As far as the Musician knows, humans don’t have telepathic abilities – their own technology shouldn’t interfere with his ship’s readings. And yet… He has to surrender to the facts in front of him: there _is_ a signal, somewhere nearby, that disturbs his TARDIS’s telepathic circuit. It is not Gallifreyan technology: the wavelengths are too different, and when he tries, very carefully, to probe it with his own mind, he can’t understand what it says. _If_ this signal is trying to say something. He is, however, almost overwhelmed by a strong wave of anguish and hostility… He quickly closes his mind. He can’t investigate this from his ship. He needs to go outside.

He connects one of his tools to his TARDIS – a smaller, portable monitor that will display the strength of the signal as he goes – puts his coat on, and leaves his ship. It is not the first time he has visited a human world, but he doesn’t know much about Earth in the 21st century, and he doesn’t know where he has landed exactly.

He is in the middle of a city, if the tall buildings around him are any indication. There are a lot of humans around him, walking and driving and talking to each other… and even though he knew what to expect, his heart still aches to see how they look so similar to his people. He clenches his jaw against the thought, and turns around to see what his TARDIS has disguised itself as.

It’s a… how did humans call it again… a _‘food truck’_? There’s a big bowl of noodles painted on the side of the truck. The vehicle is closed and parked near a big parking lot. When he looks around, he sees a few people – no one notices him, of course, since he is still touching his ship and the perception filter is on. There is a man leaning over his car, apparently whispering to it. Strange. Is that a thing humans do?

It doesn’t matter. The Musician is not very interested in humans and their ways, and he starts walking briskly towards the direction where the signal is stronger. His monitor takes him through a number of streets and back alleys – he tries to avoid the crowd of the main streets as much as possible – until he reaches one of the tallest buildings. He circles around the building, which confirms his hypothesis: the source of the signal is definitely in here.

Now he needs to enter. Through the glass facade of the building, he can see a lady sitting at a desk who distractedly greets people coming in and out. She will probably stop him if he comes in without a plausible reason. He needs a plan… Something clever. (He can’t help but to think that _he_ would have had _dozens_ of plans… _He_ always was the cleverest person the Musician knew.)

He is considering his options when he notices people smoking outside, a few of them in white coats. Maybe he can use them as a way in? His own coat is long and white, and although it looks nothing like theirs, it should be enough to fool the lady at the desk if she is as distracted as she seems.

He approaches, and stands behind them, looking at his monitor – they don’t pay any attention to him, busy as they are with their conversations. He tries not to show on his face how bothered he is by the smoke from their cigarettes – _how_ can humans enjoy such a thing? Luckily, they finish their break after a minute or two, and he trails right behind them to enter the building. The lady barely glances at the group, and he tries not to look tense or suspicious as she does. He walks behind the group until he is out of sight, at the other end of the entrance hall.

He is in. Now he needs to find the source of this strange signal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NGL, the Musician wondering how humans can enjoy smoking is totally me. XD
> 
> I can't believe it took me so long to update this! I was in a bit of a slump for almost a week and couldn't get anything done... Confinement is driving me nuts guys! =(  
> I do hope it will be more frequent now that I am back on track!
> 
> Please leave kudos and comments if you liked the first chapter, I'll try to reply to everyone!

**Author's Note:**

> If you're enjoying this fic, you can also check out the other MDZS fics I'm writing [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esk95/works?fandom_id=11987966)! ;)


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